Senator Gershaw valedictorian hopes to make life easier for those with disabilities

Commentator/Courier Photo Submitted by Samantha Johnson. ACHIEVEMENT: Mary Reusser is the valedictorian for Senator Gershaw this year.

By Samantha Johnson
Prairie Rose Public Schools Content Writer

There were a couple top students in this year’s graduating class at Senator Gershaw and Mary Reusser was somewhat nervous if she was going to be the one to come out with the highest grades.

“There is always a chance, you never know if someone else is going to sneak in there,” said Reusser. “It was a really good feeling when I was told. As much as grades aren’t an accurate representation of someone’s intelligence, it’s the only thing universities look at and I wanted to get into a good university. I also love learning, so working hard at it isn’t difficult. Learning is fun.”

Reusser received early admission into the University of Calgary engineering program and her goal is to pursue biomedical engineering. “It’s building robotic limbs or organs for people,” explained Reusser. “I have an older brother who is disabled and I’ve seen first-hand how we need more advanced technology to help him live better. My friend’s younger brother had some biomedical engineering students work with him and I saw the good it did. I’ve always been interested in creating and building along with the maths and sciences. I thought it was the perfect mixture of all of that.”

Aside from concentrating on her schoolwork, Reusser loves track and field, particularly discus and shotput, which she said require different mindsets to excel in. “It’s hard to explain, it almost exhilarating in a calming way. Once you get good at discus, it’s mostly muscle memory and the movements are going so fast. Shotput is a different mindset, for discus you need to be as loose as possible but also strong, which is really hard to do because as soon as you try to do something hard or fast, you tense up. As soon you tense up in discus, it goes straight into the ground. You need to be loose and fast and throw it as hard as you can and once you get to that point, it’s relaxing,” stated Reusser.

Another sport she finds relaxing is swimming and while she was never on a swim team, she and her brother competed as independents in the Alberta Summer Games a few years ago. She said swimming came easy to her and one of her summer jobs is as a lifeguard at Foremost Pool, which has taught her how to cope with stress under pressure, extensive first-aid and to manage rowdy teenagers.

Additionally, she and her two brothers played sledge hockey for several years in Medicine Hat. “My older brother wanted to join. Me and my other brother thought it would be nice to play a sport all together where we are all on equal footing, so we all joined the team. We played that for around six years. We convinced my friend’s family to join and brought in another family, so brought a bit of Bow Island to Medicine Hat to play sledge hockey. When I first started, we were a small team that lost at every tournament. Last year, we were in a tournament in Calgary against higher ranking teams and did well.”

Her other summer job is at the same still her father works at. She completed her class 4 power engineering certificate before starting Grade 12 last year so she would move beyond being only a general labourer. Both lifeguarding and working at the still are good summer jobs and she was hoping that was how she was going to spend the next two months. However, she found out last week she will be having knee surgery next week, which has a 16-week recovery time. “By the time I enter university, if all goes well, I will be into the sport readiness phase. That’s probably the best timing so I’m not hobbling around the campus.”